INFORMATICS
AND HERMENEUTICS

Rafael
Capurro

Contribution
to the conference Software Development and Reality Construction
held at Schloß Eringerfeld (Germany), September 25-30, 1988,
organized
by the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) in cooperation with the
German
National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD), Sankt Augustin,
and
sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. Published in:
Christiane Floyd, Heinz Züllighoven, Reinhard Budde, Reinhard
Keil-Slawik
(Eds.): Software Development and Reality Construction, Springer-Verlag,
Berlin,
Heidelberg, New York, 1992, p. 363-375.

CONTENTS

I. IntroductionII.
Heidegger's tool analysis in "Being
and Time" III.
The existential conception of
science IV.
Some comments on Heidegger's analysis of
modern science and technology V.
A plea for an open and weak constructivism: The power
of software and the weakness of imagination

Notes Bibliography

I.
INTRODUCTION

1.1
The
short cut and the long path

Not
only
the historical development of informatics as a scientific and technical
discipline but also its core problems are, prima facie, far
removed
from philosophical developments arising from soft sciences such as
hermeneutics,
and closer to logic or the philosophy of science. Is the relationship
between
informatics and hermeneutics of any mutual relevance? What happens when
we reflect hermeneutically on the foundations of informatics? Winograd
and Flores have made the attempt, and one result was their insight into
"the non-obviousness of the rationalistic orientation" of informatics.
Consequently, they found themselves "deeply concerned with the question
of language" (1). My
purpose is to show why Winograd and Flores have grasped, on the one
hand,
some key issues of Heidegger's hermeneutics, while at the same time
distorting
some of his insights, particularly with regard to science and
information
technology.

Their
critique of what they call the rationalistic tradition is based on the
following premises:

1.
The process of understanding is a never-ending one; it always implies
unspoken
conditions; it is limited.

2.
Language does not represent objective meanings, but is a social process
through which commitments are generated.

In
opposition to these premises, the rationalistic tradition's view on
human
understanding is characterized by the idea of representing a so-called
objective world through mental processes. Language is considered to be
the result of such mental data processing, which is basically
autonomous
and independent from the social context. Consequently, computers which
manipulate language are said to be intelligent, to understand, to
think,
to be able to replace experts and so on.

Winograd
and Flores criticize this conception. They view computers essentially
as
tools for conversation, to be implemented as aids where the user's
background
expectations are confronted with non-obvious situations.

In
such situations of what they call breakdown,
tools are normally no
longer
of any use. Instead of their readiness-to-hand – a
Heideggerian
concept which I shall explain in detail below – we are confronted
with their presence-at-hand
as objects. By a hermeneutical design of
computer
programs, some possible breakdown situations can be implemented in
order
to help the user when something goes wrong with the normal functioning
of the system. In other words, the flexibility of the system depends on
its capacity for anticipating such situations, i.e., on its capacity to
remain a tool.

These
as well as other insights are important not only for informatics, but
also
for hermeneutics. But some of them are also a one-sided. I shall
comment
below on this one-sidedness. My critique concerns the following
points:

a)
Winograd and Flores' opposition between hermeneutics and the
rationalistic
tradition, taking as a basis some key concepts from Heidegger's "Being
and Time" and leaving aside their connection to Heidegger's overall
project
of a philosophical foundation of the natural and socio-historical
sciences.

b)
Their interpretation of computer-based information systems as tools,
taking
Heidegger's tool analysis as a foundational paradigm for modern information
technology and leaving aside Heidegger's explicit characterization of
modern
science and technology in his later works.

1.2
Is
there an opposition between hermeneutics and the rationalistic
tradition?

Since
the authors devote the first part of their study to discussing
specifically
some basic concepts of Heidegger's hermeneutics, and as they do so by
explicitly
avoiding "the twists and turns of academic debate" (p. xiii), i.e., by
taking the short cut of popularized accounts, it is useful at least to
indicate where the long path might lead to, in order to see to what
extent
the views arrived at via the short cut are distorted ones. This is
particularly
the case with regard to Heidegger's tool analysis in "Being and Time"
taken
as a philosophical basis for understanding computer technology.
Moreover,
Winograd and Flores's interpretation gives the general impression that
Heidegger's hermeneutics is anti-rationalistic. Neither in "Being and
Time"
nor in his later writings was Heidegger merely criticizing
modern
science and technology; he was looking for a point of view which would
allow us to see their specific demarcations. If we take the long path –
and I can just point to it here! – then we may learn that
there
is
no such opposition nor definite point of view; in other words, that
taking
the long path means abandoning the illusion of definite
borderlines
and foundational oversimplifications based on paradigm changes.

1.3
Can
a tool-oriented view of computer-based information systems cope with
the
radical ambiguity of modern technology?

Taking
Heidegger's tool analysis as a key for the interpretation of modern
information
technology means distorting both phenomena. What is left aside in this
instrumental interpretation is –
according to Heidegger's
explicit
analyses of modern technology – its
radical ambiguity.
Recognizing
this ambiguity means seeing the impossibility of surmounting it by
trying
to master it, because such a project – for instance, by trying to
replace
an old paradigm by a new one – is based on the premises of what
it
tries
to replace: it is a petitio principii. This ambiguity is, as I
shall
point out in the final section, a key issue with regard to software
development,
since software is not just a tool, but a specific form of reality
disclosure
and transformation. The question is, then: what kind of reality are we
constructing when we develop software, and what are the limits and
chances
of such a form of reality construction? In order to perceive such
limits,
we have to take the long path. This is merely an invitation to take
such
a walk, not the walk itself.

In
the final section, I shall plead for what I call an open
constructivism,
i.e., for a confrontation of software development with metaphorical
forms
of reality construction.

II.
HEIDEGGER'S TOOL ANALYSIS IN "BEING AND TIME"

2.1
The
task of philosophical destruction

Since
Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of our being as There-Being
or Dasein
on the basis of a pre-conceptual comprehension of
Being
(Seinsverständnis)
as a condition of possibility for the interpretation of beings,
hermeneutics
has left the domain of text interpretation to become a philosophical
research
programme (2).

In
"Being and Time" (§ 6) Heidegger calls the task of questioning the
obviousness of a dominating tradition destruction
(Destruktion).
This
term
does not have the negative meaning of eliminating the past, but rather
suggests the task of criticizing a present theory or world view
by an analysis of its presuppositions. Since this analysis, being
itself
historical, cannot be regarded as a definitive, we are left with the
figure
of a circle – a
hermeneutical not a vicious one. From a hermeneutical
perspective,
then, it makes no sense to replace old paradigms by new ones; the
question
of their destruction concerns the critical appraisal of their forgotten
historical roots in order to perceive their limitations. In other
words,
with the help of hermeneutics we learn to see theoretical and practical
traditions and their terminologies as answers to forgotten questions,
and
we learn how to question the questions themselves.

2.2
Being-in-the-world
and the outside world

Winograd
and Flores oppose the dualistic view of the rationalistic tradition,
with
its conception of a subjective mental world and an outside world of
physical
reality, to the phenomenological insight in the "more fundamental unity
of being-in-the-world
(Dasein)."
(p. 31). This approach is, in my
opinion,
diametrically opposed to Maturana and Varelas' radical constructivism,
to which Winograd and Flores refer directly, leaving aside the
dimension
of openness
(Offensein)
or being-outside
(Draussensein)
as the way
human
beings are (which is also the reason why Heidegger chooses the term
Da-sein),
retaining only the hermeneutical process of understanding,
reinterpreted
now as an autopoietical one. Heidegger also calls our way of
being existence
(Existenz,
Ek-sistenz). This term means being open to a field
of possibilities, and it expresses the contrary of what we usually mean
when we point to the existence of things, grasping their being as
actual
being. Thus, we can paradoxically say that human beings are not, but
that
they exist (3).

In
their somewhat eclectic approach, Winograd and Flores fail to see the
contradiction
between Heidegger's hermeneutics and what I call strong or radical
constructivism
(4). The dimension of openness, not that of a so-called
external reality, lies at the very heart of Heidegger's "Being and
Time".
He writes:

"When
Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not
somehow
get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally
encapsulated,
but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always 'outside'
alongside
entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already
discovered.
(...) And furthermore, the perceiving of what is known is not a process
of returning with one's booty to the 'cabinet' of consciousness after
one
has gone out and grasped it; even in perceiving, retaining, the Dasein
which knows remains outside, and it does so as Dasein."
(5)

This is
the exact opposite to an autopoietic system, which

"holds
constant its organization and defines its boundaries through the
continuous
production of its components." (6)

2.3
Tools
and breakdowns

The
way
we in which we exist in the world is intrinsically a social and a
practical
one. As being-together-with-others
(Mitsein),
we are immersed in the
world,
but not just in the common spatial sense we think about when we say a
chair
is in the room. World (Welt) does
not mean the totality of beings out
there,
but the complex and open web of meanings in which we live. How
do
we become aware of the world in terms of the open dimension of our
existence
in which we are normally immersed ? In order to answer this question –
and not in order to describe the phenomenon of modern technology –
Heidegger
shows how, through the negative experience of using tools, the
worldhood (Weltlichkeit)
of the world, i.e., our specific way of being in it,
becomes
manifest (7).

The phenomenological analysis of our everyday
immersion in the world shows human beings concerned with things in
terms
of using them as tools. This means that things are inserted within a
project,
building a structure of references for practical purposes. This
implicit
purposefulness remains tacit unless a disturbance occurrs.
Winograd
and Flores call such a disturbance breakdown,
thus simplifying the
Heideggerian
terminology and missing the point. What happens in these cases is
not simply that tools become present-at-hand
(Vorhandenes)
instead of
their
former practical way of being as ready-to-hand
(Zuhandenes),
but that
the
world itself, i.e., the possibility of discovering beings within a
structure
of references, becomes manifest.

At
this point, I would like to draw attention to one oversimplification of
Winograd and Flores' short cut. They write:

"Another
aspect of Heidegger's thought that is difficult for many people to
assimilate
to their previous understanding is his insistence that objects and
properties
are not inherent in the world, but arise only in an event of breaking
down
in which they become present-at-hand"
(p. 36)

If we
read Heidegger's analysis (§16), we find a very detailed
description
of different modes of concern in our everyday encounter with entities
we
use for doing something, through which the phenomenon of world becomes
manifest, namely:

a) Conspicuousness (Auffälligkeit):
when we meet tools as something unusuable,
i.e., "not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool
turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable." (p. 102). In this
case we do not merely have an event of breaking down from
readiness-to-hand
to presence-at-hand, but a case where tools, in their
readiness-at-hand,
cannot be used. Heidegger writes:

"Equipment
which is present-at-hand in this way is still not just a Thing
which
occurs somewhere. The damage to the equipment is still not a mere
alteration
of a Thing – not a change of properties
which just occurs in
something
present-at-hand." (p. 103).

b) Obstrusiveness (Aufdringlichkeit):
whereas, in the case of
conspicuousness,
we come up against unusable things within what is already
ready-to-hand, there are also cases in which things are not to hand at
all, namely when we miss something. In such cases, we look at
what
is missing in such a way that the more urgently we need it, the more
obstrusively
it reveals itself. Things seem to lose their character of
readiness-to-hand
completely.

c) Obstinacy (Aufsässigkeit):
finally, we have the case where we
encounter
things which are neither unusable and not missing, but just standing in
the way. Tools reveal their unreadiness-to-hand, although they are not
damaged and although we do not miss them; we just do not need them here
and now. They disturb us in such a way, that they obstinately call our
attention. We must deal with them before we do anything else. The
un-readiness-to-hand means, in this case, that we
have to
do something before we can go on with our concerns.

In
all three cases, as Heidegger remarks, tools do not become mere things,
i.e., tools show themselves to be still ready-to-hand in their
presence-at-hand.
Readiness-to-hand does not simply vanish. What we experience through
these
three modes of concern is, therefore, not just the readiness-to-hand
of tools, but the phenomenon of the world itself. Why? Simply
because
we go thematically beyond things, i.e., we discover ourselves
as
the ones whose character it is to go beyond things, or whose essence is
existence or openness. The experience of unfamiliarity of tools reveals
that we do not just operate within a system of thematic and
non-thematic
references, but are radically (or, as Heidegger says, ontologically)
open
to Being itself as the horizon of significance, allowing us to discover
beings in the modes of concern of readiness-to-hand and
presence-at-hand.
As one clearly see, Heidegger's tool analysis does not set out to
describe
the phenomenon of modern technology – this is precisely what it does
not
do – and it is not intend to be in
pragmatistic opposition to the
theoretical
view of the sciences.

III.
THE EXISTENTIAL CONCEPTION OF SCIENCE

It
is
important to remember that, when Heidegger reinterprets the whole
analysis
of our being-in-the-world under the explicit notion of temporality, he
gives as an example of authentic existence not only the temporal
structure
of world discovery under the horizon of purposeful instrumentality, but
also the process of scientific discovery (§ 69). Why? Because
science
is a kind of disclosure, where man must make explicit the
preconditions
for the discovery of beings, no longer as tools, but as objects. In
other
words, the scientific disclosure shows the unity of man and
world.
The process of knowing is neither a projection of a worldless
subjectivity
on an outside reality, nor is there an objective world influencing a
subject.
It is an encounter, where the project of Dasein is not an arbitrary
construction
of reality, but always relies on a pre-understanding as the horizon for
a specific non-thematic-practical and thematic-theoretical
approach,
enabling human beings, during the encounter, to disclosure their
own structures.

Heidegger
insists that the emergence of the theoretical scientific attitude does
not simply lie in the disappearance of praxis (p.
409). To no
longer
regard a hammer as a tool, but "as a corporeal thing subject to the law
of gravity" (p. 412), is not the result of a breakdown but of a
change-over
(umschlagen)
of our understanding of Being. There is no opposition or
even
contradiction between taking something as present-at-hand and the
scientific
attitude, merely because that which is ready-to-hand can also be made
the
subject of scientific investigation, for instance, economics (p. 361).
The main point is not the modification in the kind of being of
things,
but the modification of our understanding of Being,
i.e.,
of the way we project a priori the horizon that is to serve us
as
guide for the disclosure. Heidegger concludes:

"When
the basic concepts of that understanding of Being by which we are
guided
have been worked out, the clues of its methods, the structure of its
way
of conceiving things, the possibility of truth and certainty which
belongs
to it, the ways in which things get grounded or proved, the mode in
which
it is binding for us, and the way it is communicated – all these will
be
determined. The totality of these items constitutes the full
existential
conception of science." (p. 414)

The primordial
difference between this type of constructivism and a subjectivist one
is
that, for Heidegger, Daseins's projects are based on the facticity of
thrownness-character
(Geworfenheit)
of Dasein itself. Its being as Being-possible is not a
free-floating
potentiality but a thrown posibility (geworfene
Möglichkeit),
already
got into definite possibilities, being free for (not of)
them (p. 183). As Being-possible, we are a pro-jection, a temporal
transcendence,
always outside with others within a process of practical and
theoretical
disclosure of beings.

Since
Dasein is neither the creator of itself nor of beings, this process of un-concealment
is, given our finitude (natality and
mortality),
groundless. To be concerned with concealment means ultimately
to
face death as the horizon that makes all other possibilities of
existence
to come forth as finite possibilities. Because of the
limited
nature of its possibilities, Dasein is not able to comprehend Being
under
other conditions than finite ones. This way of encountering beings
presupposes
a being whose mode of being is to be this encounter itself, a temporal
being. We interpret the world as the web of relations in which we
are
embedded on the basis of a finite or temporal pre-understanding of
Being.
This is not a solipsistic process. It takes place as listening to
others
as the way we are originally open to each other, capable of dialogue
and
communication. Dasein articulates its being-in-the-world, anticipating
the structure of beings and letting them appear during the encounter
through
mood and speech.

IV.
SOME COMMENTS ON HEIDEGGER'S ANALYSIS OF MODERN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

In
his
later works, Heidegger poses the question about the specific nature of
modern science and technology. This is another part of the long path
which
remains untrodden in Winograd and Flores' short cut und that should be
taken into account when reading their critique of the rationalistic
tradition
using as a basis Heidegger's "Being and Time".

3.1
Heidegger
on modern science

Heidegger's
starting point in his phenomenological analysis of our
being-in-the-world
is actually a pre-scientific view of our everyday comprehension of
beings
within a practical perspective or project. This primacy of the
practical
does not mean, as I have already shown, a devaluation of the scientific
or rational view of the world. Science is, in actual fact, a genuine
possibility of our being-in-the-world. What Heidegger is questioning
throughout
"Being and Time" is not rationality (or even science) as such,
but
the critical problem as posed by Neo-Kantians: how does a knowing
subject
emerge from its subjectivity in order to establish contact with an
external
object in the real world. This Cartesian dichotomy and the
corresponding
realistic and idealistic positions disappear as soon as our way of
being
is grasped as being always outside, as There-being. This is the reason
why Heidegger does not simply use the word consciousness or subject. We
are not, as Medard Boss puts it (8), a capsule-like
psyche re-presenting things from an outside world and communicating
these
representations to other psyches.

The
concept of science in "Being and Time" aims at giving sciences an
ontological
ground in man's being-in-the-world, instead of their modern
transcendental
constitution in subjectivity. One should remember that "Being and Time"
begins with a reference to the crisis of scientific research (§ 3)
and to the logical precedence of the question of Being in order to be
able
to distinguish between the different regions in their ontological
specificity.

Heidegger's
later analyses of modern science (9) make explicit
the differences between science in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages,
showing
modern science to be a particular project or dis-closure of Being on
the
basis of subjectivity. Some of the characteristics of this project are:
materialism (= everything becomes raw material), uniformity,
functionality,
objectivity, calculability, domination, productivity, exploitation
(10).
Modern (natural) science reveals nature in its objectivity, but this
not
the only possibility for dis-covering it. Heidegger contrasts the
conception
of subjective re-presentation of beings with his view of human
existence
as primarily open or receptive to Being. While, according to Heidegger,
in Antiquity the projective and the receptive paradigms coexisted,
modern
science superimposes only the projective standards, now founded not in
Being, but in subjectivity and, ultimately, in its "will to power"
(Nietzsche).
But it is the openness to Being that enables to inquire into the
foundations
of beings, as we do it in science. We experience this basic dimension
in
our relation to beings when we regard them and ourselves with the eyes
of the artist, i.e., when we open ourselves to the aesthetic dimension
of existence. This is, in fact, not just another possibility, but the
implicit
condition of modern science, and its future, too.

Recapitulating,
we could say that, while in "Being and Time" Heidegger was looking for
an existential foundation of science, in his later works he became
aware
of the peculiarity of modern science. Whether we agree with
this
analysis or not, one thing is clear: questioning the rationalitic
tradition
is not just a matter of changing paradigms. The pragmatistic will
to
surmount paradigms belongs closely to the tradition it sets out to
criticize.
The change from one paradigm to another is not just like changing
clothes...
This is the reason why Heidegger also prefers the term overcoming
(Verwindung)
to surmounting (Überwindung)
when talking about our relation to
Western
metaphysics, of which science and technology are the outstanding
results.
The term Verwindung is related to the way in which we overcome a
disease
or a pain or the loss of a loved one. It means letting our
possibilities
come over us, individually and socially, and becoming acquainted
with them as something we cannot simply through away or surmount,
according
to the different modern idealistic or materialistic theories of
progress.

Heidegger's
analysis of modern science is closely related to his views on modern
technology.

3.2
Heidegger
on technology

Winograd
and Flores refer to the possibility of designing computer technology as
a tool, and they do so by reference to the analysis in "Being and
Time".
Heidegger's analysis of the question of modern technology can be found
in his later writings, particularly in "The Question Concerning
Technology"
(11). The connection between modern science and modern
technology is usually seen in terms of the one –
technology –
emerging,
as applied science, out of the other. Heidegger sees modern science as
being already technological. Technology is not a collection of tools to
be designed according to a pragmatical idea, but a specific form of
un-concealing
or disclosure of beings. Where does the specificity of this kind of
disclosure
lie? Heidegger considers this question with regard to technological
disclosure
in Ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages, as well as to other forms of
non-technological disclosure, particularly art. The first approach
leads
to the conception of modern technology as challenging
disclosure
(herausforderndes
Entbergen).

Both art and technology are similar insofar
as they bring forth beings which cannot, as in the case of nature,
disclose
themselves. But, in that case, technology does not exactly mean using
tools
for manipulating things. This characteristic – already implicit in the
Greek conception of causes or 'aitiai' –
becomes predominant in the
case
of modern technology. Ancient technology was less challenging and
therefore
nearer to art. The univocity of modern technology accentuates such
characteristics
as control, by considering things to be in supply (Bestand).
Even
nature
is now being conceived from this one-sided anthropocentric and
subjectivistic
view, i.e. everything is viewed as supply or as 'ob-ject',
lying
before man's challenging disclosure. Modern technology is a generalized
attitude towards the world, whose characteristics are summarized by
Heidegger
in the single concept: Ge-Stell.

This
is a word that normally means 'frame', 'stand', 'rack'. An English
translation
might perhaps be 'framework', as suggested by Mitcham and Mackey (12).
This generalized attitude is not something we simply change ad
libitum.
It belongs to our Western tradition, and it is particularly
interrelated
to the non-challenging disclosure of Being we call art. Technology
belongs
to our destiny, but not in the sense of a tragical necessity or
Nemesis.
Pessimism and voluntaristic optimism are re-actions which presuppose
either
the idea of a hidden power behind history or of man as having such
power
over reality. Being is not God or its substitute, but merely the
very
fact of finite givenness of man and the world in a changing,
non-perennial
tradition.

For
Heidegger, entering into a free relation with technology
means being able to see and let coexist different attitudes to
the
world. Instead of surmounting technology or indulging in back-to-nature
dreams, he looks for possible forms of its overcoming or Verwindung.
According
to Heidegger, we have understood what modern technology is when we do
not
see it merely as a tool or as man's activity, but as a kind of
world
disclosure. At the origin of technology - in Greek 'poiesis' and
'techné' – the character of challenging
does not entail the primacy of the
non-dominating
attitude of bringing forth things. This gives us a clue in our search
for
a definition of modern technology or, in other words, when looking for
a free relation to it. This is, I feel, neither a naïve nor a
romantic
view of modern technology. And it is not, of course, an
anti-rationalistic
one!

Heidegger's
reflections information technology may serve as an illustration here
(13).
What are the characteristics revealed by information technology as it
appears
in modernity? Analogously to the view on modern technology as a whole,
information technology is not just a tool for manipulating
language.
Nor does it suffice to look on it, as Winograd and Flores do, as a tool
for designing human conversations. In actual fact it is what I suggest
calling the information Ge-Stell. This term is meant to recall
the
Heideggerian characteristics of technology – and particularly that of
challenging
disclosure – in their relation to language.
This characteristic becomes
manifest when we consider language from a non-dominating attitude, as
in
the case of poetry. The crucial point about modern information
technology,
as well as modern technology as a whole, is not how to design
computer-based
systems under the hermeneutical premise that they should be
regarded merely as tools.

According
to Heidegger, we can only overcome (verwinden)
technology, if we are able to see its ambiguity: it looks like
a
tool, but it is a challenging disclosure of the totality of beings.
This
is not something we are simply able to change, in the case of
information
technology, for instance through a different kind of software design.
We
must first learn first to see its ambiguity, just as we learn to see
our
image and the image of things in modern art – say
in a cubist picture
by
Picasso –
not as the deformation of an ideal, but as an original
perspective of what things are. By the same token, we must learn how to
see information technology as the modern challenging perspective of our
being-with-others in the world. In other words, we must learn to see it
as the perspective it is. Consequently, we must consider this
perspective
as a genuine possibility to be inserted into the plurality of other
possibilities
of social interaction. By assuming a certain distance to it, we learn
to
view it ironically, by abandoning the illusion that we could
cope better with human conversations merely by
readiness-to-hand
design and breakdown programming. We do, of course, need user-friendly
systems. But their friendliness does not lie in their strong
capability
to assimilate conversations, but in their weakness to do so. By
making them suitable for conversations, we may be distorting both.

IV.
A PLEA FOR AN OPEN AND WEAK CONSTRUCTIVISM: THE POWER OF SOFTWARE
AND THE WEAKNESS OF IMAGINATION

4.1
Sense
and meaning or living metaphors and software development

Information
technology, as well as technology in general, can be seen as a threat.
And we have good reasons for seeing it in this way, particularly where
we use it for transforming all other possible forms of human
interaction
under the premises of this perspective. Within this approach, we see
the
originality of the perspective as the only possible one. This is merely
the other side of the coin, as we might try to replace or surmount a
so-called
wrong or deformed cubist picture by a so-called right one. Instead of
that,
we must educate our eyes to see the information Ge-stell in its own
original
perspective. Discovering its originality by assuming a certain distance
from it, also enables us to see it not as a threat but as a
chance.

To
show what I mean, I would like to use Paul Ricoeur's concept of
living
metaphors to illustrate the difference between the world disclosure
or reality construction through software technology on the one
side,
and poetical world disclosure on the other (14).
Ricoeur's ideas are basically related to the distinction by G. Frege
between
sense (Sinn)
and meaning (Bedeutung)
(15). In the field
of poetry, the creation of metaphors can be seen as:

(a)
a production of sense, i.e., of expanding language within
language,
or (b)
a heuristic function, discovering new possible aspects of
reality
(16).

This
last function is not only one of disclosure (revelation) but also one
of
transformation.

Both
aspects also appear in a perspectivist manner if we look at the
information
Ge-Stell, and particularly at the field of software development. In
this
field, we also have, on the one side, a production of sense, i.e., of
expansion
of language, but it is mainly an expansion of formalisms and it
is governed by mainly univocal rules. Unlike literature, for instance,
software is primarily limited in its potentiality of sense production.
Otherwise, it could not be applied to the referent for which it was
conceived.
On the other side, software is developed not merely to describe, but to
actually dominate i.e., transform or control specific
dimensions
of reality. In other words, the relation between the creation of living
metaphors – a
poem, for instance – and
software development can be seen
as a reverse one: a poem opens a field of possible sense
interpretations
and can be used heuristically for the disclosure and transformation of
reality (17).

Software
development aims at mainly univocal reduction of the metaphorical sense
of language, i.e., it looks primarily for meaning in order to transform
or control reality. The will and/or power to dominate reality that is
at
the basis of a meaning-relation constitutes, in my opinion, the
difference
between software technology and, say, pure mathematics or logic.

4.2
Strong
constructivism versus weak constructivism

We
need,
of course, both ways of creative or constructivist relation to
the
world, i.e., to the field of open possibilities within given
traditions,
in order to continuing being the finite project we are. If, as a result
of a one-sided view of the information Ge-Stell,
we see in it the only
possible perspective, then it presents to us the illusion of an ideal
language,
of pure intelligence, of objective information, and so on. But if we
have
learned to see it as a possible perspective among others, then its
claims
become weaker, and we learn not to believe that our demands are
fulfilled
just because be adopt an anthropomorphic terminology. Analogously to
the
idea of conjectural knowledge in the field of science, we might also
begin
to see weak technology as good technology.

We could then consider
it for what it is, i.e., not primarily as a method for the
production
of an artificial mind, for instance, nor merely as tool for
conversations.
It allows both views because it as an ambiguous project of world
disclosure.
It takes the perspective of modern subjectivity and can therefore try
to
even substitute it. But, at the same time, it does not enable this
subjectivity
to look behind in order to become aware of the thrownness character of
its world projects.

My
final plea is, therefore, not for modern subjectivity in the form of
radical
constructivism to be given the tools it needs for the construction of
reality
as a whole, including human conversations, but rather for this global
claim
to be questioned – a claim common to the
rationalistic as well as to
the
instrumentalistic tradition. In other words, my plea is for a weak
or
open constructivism through stressing the potentialities of human
imagination
in a dialogical process of sense creation. Such an open constructivism
is the opposite of Maturana and Varela's autopoietical systems,
which reduce the openness of our being-in-the-world to the idea of egocentric
or closed systems.

On the ethical basis of the dialogical experience of
openness to each other and to our common world, we can learn how to see
computer-based information systems in all their social, historical and
cultural ambiguity, reducing in this way their, as well as our own,
hermeneutical
ambitions. To this extent, I see computer-based systems not as a
threat but as a chance to insert the originality of the
challenging
perspective of human interactions into the plurality of other kinds of
non-challenging ways of reality disclosure and construction. How can
this
be done? Well, our Conference on Software Development and Reality
Construction
was a start.

NOTES

(1)
Winograd and Flores, 1986, p. 17. See the reviews by Vellino, 1987,
Stefik
and Bobrow, 1987, Suchman 1987 and Clancey 1987; also the
"Response
to the reviews" (Winograd and Flores, 1987) and my review (Capurro
1987).
On hermeneutics, see Shapiro aand Sica 1984.

(2)
I am referring to (Heidegger 1987): "Sein und Zeit" (1927) (engl.
transl.
1987). The best introduction to Heidegger in English is still
(Richardson,
1967). See also (Steiner, 1978) and (Capurro, 1991). For a brief
exposition
of some of Heidegger's major works, see (Capurro, 1988). On Heidegger's
interpretation of modern science and technology, see (Kockelmans, 1984)
and (Kockelmans, 1985); (Loscerbo, 1981, Schirmacher, 1983) and
(Seubold,
1986).

(3)
The term Dasein does not denote an asexual human
being.
It means the primordial structure of being-with-others as the condition
for different concrete possibilities of living sexuality. Human
sexuality
and human body are not conceived merely as biological phenomena, but as
being within the field of openness, which is basically related to our
affections
or moods(Stimmungen).
See (Heidegger, 1978, Boss,1975) and
(Derrida,
1988).

(4)
See (Schmidt, 1987).

(5) (Heidegger,
1987, p. 89)

(6)
(Winograd and Flores, 1986, p. 44)

(7)
Heidegger's examples for tools are: "ink-stand, pen, ink, paper,
blotting
pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room" ("Being and Time",
p.
97). With regard to the hammer – the
example to which Winograd and
Flores
explicitly refer –
Heidegger remarks that there is no real opposition
between
looking at things merely theoretically or practically, insofar as
practical
behavior is not atheoretical in the sense of sightlessness, and,
correspondingly,
theoretical behavior is looking without practical circumspection, but
not
without rules: "it constructs a canon for itself in the form of method."
(ibid. p. 99). Other examples of tools in this context are shoe and
clock.
Nature itself is discovered (as environment) under its ready-to-hand
kind
of being from the point of view of toolmaking. Finally, not only the
"domestic
world of the workshop" but also the "public world" with its "roads,
streets,
bridges, buildings" is ready-to-hand.
Heidegger remarks explicitly that
its aim is not to discover that presence-at-hand
is founded on readiness-to-hand,
but to exhibit the phenomenon of the world, which is not just the sum
of
both characteristics.

(8)
See (Boss, 1975). See also (Capurro, 1986) as well as (Capurro
1985).

(9)
See for instance (Heidegger, 1975) and (Heidegger, 1972).

(10)
For a more detailed elucidation of these characteristics, see (Seubold,
1986, pp. 218-227).